


I'll Bring The Peanut Butter

by Valor_Theory



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aprons, Cookies, Disney References, Emotionally Supportive Levi, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Kisses, Levi and Mikasa almost get along, M/M, Mama Bear Mikasa, Mild Language, Pillow & Blanket Forts, snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:45:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4781111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valor_Theory/pseuds/Valor_Theory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's the best thing to do for a boyfriend who's down in the dumps? Bring him peanut butter and build a pillow fort so impressive it will make architects cry.</p><p>Or - Mikasa is putting a lot of trust in Levi. She might have wanted someone tall enough to at least reach some level of emotional sensitivity for the job, but beggars can't be choosers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Bring The Peanut Butter

There was only one person who ever knocked – no, pounded – on his door like that.

"You."

"Me." Levi regarded Mikasa warily, eyeing her with a quirked brow. The young woman was scowling, but it didn't seem to be directed at him. For once. She was clearly uncomfortable but had some responsibility to do...whatever it was she was about to do.

"We need to talk. About Eren." Ah, there it is. Levi sighed and wordlessly let her inside his apartment. He demanded she take off her shoes.

He internally braced himself for the barrage of: 'I don't trust you, if you hurt Eren I will cave your skull in with my foot, I can't understand what he sees in a man too short to reach his own obsessive stockpile of toilet cleaner.' And it went on and on and on. Or, at least it _had_ for maybe the first six months of their relationship _._ Levi had thought he was on better terms with the overprotective sister by this point.

Mikasa bit her lip as she sat on his sofa, looking over the vision in Windex that was Levi's home. She buried her nose into her scarf. In the nine months or so he'd known her, Levi had never seen her so uncomfortable. He offered tea. She said no.

"So, what's this about?"

Her shoulders slumped, and she opened her mouth.

...

Two days later, he was drawing strange looks on the metro as he made his way to Eren's apartment complex.

Soon, he was knocking on the door. He had a key, but it felt more appropriate to let his boyfriend invite him in. There was a sleeping bag and a jar of peanut butter tucked under his arm, along with a sense of foreboding crawling up his spine. His eye twitched while he waited for the door to open. He didn't know if he could actually do this.

When Eren appeared in the entryway, Levi realized it didn't matter – he would anyways. The twenty-year-old was bleary-eyed and red-rimmed, with dark stains under his eyes to match. His hair was messier than usual and his shoulders hunched. He blinked when he realized who his visitor was.

"Levi? What're you-?" He stared at the sleeping bag and then looked up at the faint blush slowly tinting Levi's ears.

"Can I come in?"

While Eren's apartment was a little more cluttered than his, it was a wreck now. Pillows and blankets overran the living room in front of the television where a Disney film played in the background. A bowl of popcorn sat on the coffee table, and food wrappers littered the floor. Levi's nose wrinkled.

"If we're doing this, Eren, I am not sitting on that floor until every crumb is in the trash." The brunet stood at the behind him, still uncomprehending as Levi began to tidy up.

"Wait, Levi. I'm confused." The poor kid looked downright haggard, and Levi felt a twinge of sympathy. He deposited the final wrapper in the garbage and took Eren's hands. He led them to the couch.

He took a breath. "Mikasa came over before her flight." That was all he needed to say before comprehension blinked in Eren's face.

"Oh. Her business trip." He bit his lip sheepishly. "It's fine, really. You don't need to do this. She's just overprotective."

Levi rolled his eyes and flicked him lightly on the nose. "You're a dumb piece of shit. I'm not just dating you for the sex, you know. Now," he muttered as he leaned over and grabbed the jar of peanut butter. "What in fuck's name are we supposed to do with this? Your sister just made me swear to bring it without any damn explanation."

Eren laughed a little and Levi relaxed. "C'mere." The taller brunet tugged him towards the kitchenette and handed him an apron. It had a cat on it.

"Eren," he warned.

"Oh, come on. It's tradition!" They used the entire jar of peanut butter. Eren mixed the ingredients together and Levi poured the batter onto the cooking sheet. When the timer went off, he looked up, and a fork was in his face. "This is my favorite part," Eren explained, taking his own utensil and pressing it against the soft cookies in a crisscross. Before long, they had three batches cooling on the counter.

"Okay." Levi pulled off his apron. It wasn't dirty, so he hung it back up. "What's next?"

Eren pulled a container out of the fridge and pried the lid off. "Well, I already made the goulash earlier, so we just have to heat it up. We can eat while the cookies cool."

 The goulash positively dazzled his taste buds, and their cookies washed it down nicely. When they'd finished cleaning up, Levi thought that Eren looked a little less tattered. The taller dragged him back to the living room and tossed him a couch cushion. Not even Levi needed prompting for this activity.

Almost half an hour later, the two stepped back to admire their work. The pillows, cushions, and blankets were knotted, strung, and propped together to make a magnificent fort that would have had architects in tears. They laid the sleeping bags underneath the roof, zipping them together to make one large bag.

Eren smiled as he reached for the remote. "I've gotta say, this is probably one of the best forts I've built yet."

Levi scoffed, pretending to be indignant. "What? You doubted me?"

"Maybe a little," he teased. He took Levi by the hand and pulled them around the fort and into the bedroom. There, he tossed a one of his t-shirts at him. They stripped down to their boxers and Levi stole a pair of pajama pants from the dresser. Eren's shirt almost reached his knees.

The brunet moved to speak but Levi crossed his arms and cut him off.

"So help me, if the next two words out of your mouth are, 'you're cute,' then the words you say  right after that will be: 'My crotch. Oh God, you've punched me in the crotch,'" he threatened, deadpanned.

Eren shut his mouth but kept a small smile to himself nonetheless. He changed shirts and they went back to their architectural masterpiece, crawling inside.

Eren propped himself back against the couch and pulled the blanket over their heads back enough to see the television. After a period of non-verbal arguing and pouting on his part, he got Levi to nestle between his legs and lean against his chest.

"Admit you love it," he said, wrapping his arms around him.

Levi relaxed with a scowl. "You're a shit stain. Worse than Hange, I swear."

They watched the movie in silence, and Levi felt Eren chuckle against him when Tarzan had to rescue Jane from the monkeys and when the animals wrecked the camp with musical finesse. Eren's grip did tighten almost imperceptibly during _You'll Be In My Heart,_ but he was laughing again soon enough. It was going well.  Levi thought to himself that he did a pretty good job for the night.

It didn't last long. Kala and Tarzan were saying their good-byes when he felt it. Eren had been resting his chin on his shoulder for a while, but now he buried his face into it. His arms squeezed around him, and before long Levi felt the fabric of his shirt beginning to dampen. For a moment, he simply put his hand over Eren's. But, when his breath hitched, Levi muted the television and twisted in Eren's grasp.

He was a patchwork painting in tearstained cheeks, reddened eyes, and heaving lungs he tried to keep under control. He rubbed at his face. "Shit. Sorry, Levi –" but Levi cupped his jaw and pressed a kiss to his forehead before he could continue. He crawled out of Eren's hold and maneuvered them until Eren's head was in his lap and he was stroking his hair. He didn't say a word.

Eren turned on his side and pressed his face into Levi's stomach. He released a shuddering breath. Voice muffled, he started talking. "I know she's gone. I do. But there are just so many days when I think I should call her and tell her about my life and you and my degree. Five times I've gotten excited to talk to her on my birthday or a holiday. And then it just hits me all over again. Every single time it just _sucker_ _punches_ me that my mom is gone. I'm never going to see her again. I'm never going to talk to her again. I'll never introduce her to you or any of the other people I've met. She won't ever yell at me or lecture me.

"I mean, she was just always _there_ for over half my life. She must have sat with me to watch Tarzan half a million times just because I asked her to. And she made goulash when I was sick, and she made peanut butter cookies if Mikasa or I had a bad day."

Levi kept running his fingers through Eren's hair and rubbing along his spine.

"Shit. I was such a little bitch when I was younger; I argued with her all the time. I didn't want to apologize or be polite or clean my room." He chuckled weakly. "Oh, man. She wouldn't believe it if I told her I met a guy who's got me so tight under his thumb I actually make the bed now."

Levi chuckled at that too. It was quiet for a few moments. Eren took a few deep breaths and slowly extracted himself from his lover's warmth. He wiped his face with his sleeve, still worse for wear but not on the verge of breaking.

"Thank you," he whispered, slumping forward to relax his forehead against Levi's. The shorter of the two brushed a hand over Eren's cheek and tilted his head slightly.

"Of course. Any time." Levi pressed their lips together gently, closing his eyes and letting Eren take whatever he needed. A five minute exchange of soft kisses followed, only ever reassuring and patient. Eren threaded his fingers through Levi's undercut and trailed his hands down his neck, stopping to press his thumb into the junction of his shoulder.

Finally, Eren pulled away and tugged Levi down until they were snug together in their mega-sleeping bag. "I'm glad you came. I know I said otherwise, but I don't think I would have done so well on my own."

"You would've pulled through."

Eren hummed and tightened the arm he had thrown over Levi's waist. "I know. But you still helped." He closed his eyes. "I'm at least sixty percent sure I love you."

Levi thwacked him on the chest. "Asshole. You said seventy-nine percent last week."

Eren grinned. "Yeah, but you yelled at me for the laundry thing two days ago. You have to build your way back up."

"Hm. Fine. I suppose it's worth it."

...

Mikasa yawned as she turned the key. Picking up her luggage, she tip-toed as quietly as possible inside. It was roughly six in the morning; her flight landed an hour ago and Eren's place was closer than hers. Plus, she needed to make sure her brother's so-short-he-needs-a-ladder-to-reach-manhood boyfriend didn't screw anything up the night before.

The anniversary of Carla's death was never an easy time for her, but it hit Eren especially hard. The one time he'd been left alone on the day two years prior, he caved in on himself and got so upset a migraine set in. He couldn't go to school for three days.

When she looked around, she blinked. The first thing she noticed was the incredibly impressive fort taking up the entire living room. Other than that, the apartment was clean and there was a small plate of cookies on the counter next to a sticky note with her name on it. She expected to find goulash in the fridge as well.

She got changed into her sweats and a tank, sighing as she rubbed the tension from her shoulder.

Creeping around she peered into the fort. For the briefest instance, her constant irritation with Levi vanished. The older man had his head pillowed into Eren's chest. Her brother looked completely relaxed, arms flung out at either side and his chest rising with even steady breaths.

Mikasa realized Levi was staring at her, very much awake. She nodded, and he slowly began to extract himself from the mega-sleeping bag. She put the coffee pot on, and they stood quietly across from each other in the kitchen.

She handed him his mug. "Thank you for doing this."

"Don't thank me. I wanted to."

She stared at him for a moment, Levi meeting her gaze evenly. Finally, she bit her lip. "Eren's really lucky."

He pointedly dragged his eyes up and down her form. He nodded at her. "Yeah. He is."

The next year, Levi brought two jars of peanut butter.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't remember where I saw it, but this was inspired by a prompt that just said, "peanut butter, sleeping bags," and some other third thing. I hope you enjoyed reading my dumb tooth-rotting fluff as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks!


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